I believe the low transaction fee is where to stay because most of exchange/wallet are now supporting SegWit, we also have the Lightning though it was still test net mode and we also have the Global CryptoCurrency coin which can use to make day to day transaction and micro payment.

I believe the low transaction fee is where to stay because most of exchange/wallet are now supporting SegWit, we also have the Lightning though it was still test net mode and we also have the Global CryptoCurrency coin which can use to make day to day transaction and micro payment.

Lightning Network still requires broadcasting transactions to the network when you want to open a channel or close and old onel. That's why some people say that we will have to increase the blocksize anyway. Lightning Network is still not widely used among merchants so I don't think that is the reason of low transaction fees. It looks like batching and growing SegWit adoption does the good job of off-loading the load.

It won't last if more people adopt/use Bitcoin regularly and newer Bitcoin technology adoption is very slow. But aside from LN, Schnorr Signature or other upcoming technology, there are few solutions such as :1. SegWit adoption, especially Native/Bech32 SegWit once majority transaction use SegWit.2. Asking more exchange or centralized service to use transaction batching, few exchange haven't done this.3. Raise maximum block weight. But there should be research how much we should increase it while let average bitcoiner can run full nodes (excluding low-end barebone pc such as Raspberry Pi 3).

~Lightning Network still requires broadcasting transactions to the network when you want to open a channel or close and old onel. That's why some people say that we will have to increase the blocksize anyway. Lightning Network is still not widely used among merchants so I don't think that is the reason of low transaction fees. It looks like batching and growing SegWit adoption does the good job of off-loading the load.

we need to increase the capacity and increasing the blocksize is not the only way of doing that. for starters SegWit is increasing the capacity. there are also other solutions such as signature aggregation and schnorr,... that can increase the capacity in the future. we may eventually increase the blocksize also but it seems to me that is a long ways down the line.as for LN, from what i see, the way it can help scaling is that it has the potential to move a large number of transactions out of blockchain. for example imagine all the major exchanges (coinbase, kraken, bitfinex, bitstamp, poloniex, binance) started using LN, blocks may become mostly empty in that case and you don't need to open and close channels each time you make a transaction.

we need to increase the capacity and increasing the blocksize is not the only way of doing that. for starters SegWit is increasing the capacity. there are also other solutions such as signature aggregation and schnorr,... that can increase the capacity in the future. we may eventually increase the blocksize also but it seems to me that is a long ways down the line.as for LN, from what i see, the way it can help scaling is that it has the potential to move a large number of transactions out of blockchain. for example imagine all the major exchanges (coinbase, kraken, bitfinex, bitstamp, poloniex, binance) started using LN, blocks may become mostly empty in that case and you don't need to open and close channels each time you make a transaction.

You're right. I mentioned the need to increase the blocksize assuming that millions of people would start using Bitcoin in the next few years. It would be great to see major exchanges using the Lightning Network, but years will pass before it happens. It took quite a long time for some exchanges to implement SegWit. Not to mention that they still charge enormous fees for withdrawals (I understand that maintaining a huge exchange is costly, but it's not a reason to rip-off your clients). Actually, I thought that exchanges would stick to on-chain transactions to avoid cheating. They will be able to run their LN nodes 24/7, anyway.

On a very basic level, I think the recent fee drops are as a result of the way bitcoin and other coins have not been performing well, especially in the last 4-6 weeks. If they kept the fees, it would be harder for individuals to keep making transactions as they would be experiencing more loss; thus, if no transactions exchanges don't get their cut (fees/commissions/etc). You can expect fees to climb back up when bitcoin prices go back up. However, if I were an excahnge, I'll still keep it low to be very competitive.

Are the low fees due to a drop in popularity and usage or is it due to more segwit implementation? As far as I'm aware lightning is still on test net

The low fee is due to empty memepool which means more people are holding their bitcoins because they know what the holding will give us later.And segwit also the reason for the low traffic since many exchanges started to use segwit for their transaction and coinbase also going to implement the segwit soon so we can expect more cheaper transaction fee soon.